Stealing Signs
by EOlivet
Summary: Grissom, Sara and a "beautiful game."


Disclaimer: The characters you recognize belong to Anthony Zuiker, Alliance Atlantis Productions and CBS. No copyright infringement is intended. All other characters are my creation. And just for fun, I made up my own team. So no betting on these guys, okay?  
  
Acknowledgments: Special thanks to Anna for her encouragement and support. And to Erik, who taught me almost everything I know about both the games in this story.  
  
Archive: On G&S.com -- anyone else, let me know first.  
  
Rating: TV-PG. Grissom and Sara UST, PSVs (personal space violations) and actual physical contact...straight ahead! *** Stealing Signs *** Sara Sidle opened her eyes, but something about these surroundings was unfamiliar. She surveyed the space around her with a few quick glances. Couch. Blank walls. Table. Institutional colors. She had stumbled into the break room to rest her eyes for a minute. She sat up on the couch and found she was not alone in her thoughts.  
  
"Grissom," she stated, noting the man seated at the table a couple feet to her left. A quick glance at the sunglasses beside his cup of coffee prompted a hasty stare at her watch. "Must've dozed off -- I only meant to come in here for a minute," she explained, a little defensively.  
  
Grissom did not comment on her previous statement. "You look like you could use a break," he observed, taking another small sip of his coffee before replacing the mug back on the table. "C'mon, let's go for a ride."  
  
She shrugged, but followed him out of the lab doors into the outdoors. He walked past the department-issued cars and continued into the staff parking lot. Sara's eyes widened slightly as she realized they must be heading for Grissom's own car. This was clearly not department business. As he unlocked the doors, she tried to process the car in her mind -- how its feel and style matched up with the person who'd chosen it, but found she had not awakened enough to determine anything substantive.  
  
They sat in silence as he drove -- both too tired or distracted to attempt even polite conversation. Sara stared out the window and let all her thoughts simply blend into the desert scene passing by at accelerated speed. It was a wonderful release, and an even better break than her fitful respite on the couch. Her eyes grew heavy with the landscape and just as she was ready to fall into a desert-enhanced trance, the car turned sharply, jolting her out of her reverie.  
  
She sat up and her eyes flew open as she turned to Grissom with a mixture of surprise, confusion and disappointment.  
  
"We're here," he declared, by way of explanation.  
  
Her brows furrowed as she looked out the window, then back at her colleague. "We're where?" There were numerous other cars in a dusty field that also appeared to be a makeshift parking lot. This was clearly an event of some sort.  
  
Choosing yet again not to answer her question, Grissom got out of the car. "We're where?" Sara repeated, a bit bewildered and frustrated as she tried to match his determined stride across the lot.  
  
He turned to her, his eyes shining. "A favorite American break. Some would even call it a pastime."  
  
She looked at where he was indicating and was greeted with the friendly looking walls of a small stadium. She could see an old-fashioned scoreboard and rows of metal bleachers silently watching over the patchwork of dirt and grass that served as the centerpiece of the action. "A baseball game?" she asked, turning back to him.  
  
"Well you never got a signing bonus," he reasoned, handing a folded bill to the smiling older woman at the ticket counter.  
  
Sara took the ticket she had just been handed and kept on his heels as they approached the gate. "...signing bonus?" she stammered.  
  
They handed their tickets to the freckle-faced teenage boy, who, like the woman at the ticket counter, looked extremely pleased to be where he was.  
  
When they had gone through the gate, Grissom turned around suddenly, and she instinctively jumped a few steps back. "You came from San Francisco on very short notice."  
  
She was becoming increasingly confused. "I thought you said this was a break from work."  
  
"It is," he assured her. "But this is why I'm paying for your ticket."  
  
She decided not to say anything else until they had found their seats, wanting time to go over the previous conversation in her head. Once they'd climbed the rows of metal bleachers, already hot to the touch after hours of toasting in the sun, and found where they were supposed to be seated, she still wasn't any closer to a conclusion.  
  
They sat in silence for a couple minutes, soaking in the atmosphere and the mid-morning heat. Sara sighed, prompting Grissom to remark "I take it baseball isn't your game."  
  
She shrugged. "I prefer sports that aren't quite so..." she searched for the word. "Passive."  
  
"Passive?"  
  
"Yeah." She sat back in her seat before she remembered the bleachers had no backs, and was forced to steady herself. "Baseball is the only team sport that's untimed. It's also the only one where a win or a loss is placed on the shoulders of one person. The team gets a loss, but the pitcher is inherently blamed. That's always struck me as kind of defying the purpose of team sports."  
  
Grissom considered his beloved game's faults a moment before responding. "True," he began. "But it's also the only sport where the performance of the players impacts how long they get to play. Half an inning can take three minutes or it can take an hour. And no, they're not working against the clock, but against many other factors -- the size of the ballpark, the calls of the umpires, the play of the outfielders. Any of these variables turns a homerun into a lazy fly ball."  
  
She was prepared to let the subject drop when he reached into his pocket and pulled out a small notebook. She peered over his shoulder as he flipped through a few pages, smiling as she realized what it was. "You keep score," she remarked softly, surprised at how touching that simple fact was to her.  
  
"Not just scores," he revealed, turning a couple more pages.  
  
Her eyes took in the array of numbers displayed before her. "ERA, average, RBIs, errors -- you keep stats, too?"  
  
Grissom nodded, putting the notebook aside for a moment. "Baseball is the only game where players are judged by their stats, not just their team's wins and losses. You talk about blaming one person for a win or loss. What other sport allows players to be recognized for individual achievement?"  
  
Before she could respond, a jovial older man's voice boomed in greeting over the technologically deficient loudspeakers that sat atop the corners of the stadium. "Let's meet the players of your Las Vegas 15 White and 15 Blue teams today."  
  
Sara turned to her colleague. "What kind of league is this?" she wondered aloud, as she watched the players running out onto the field. They were a little older -- a few even had hair that was starting to grey -- but they exuded the enthusiasm of 20 to 25 year olds. She watched the pitcher and the rest of the infield toss the ball around before turning it over to the outfield. She looked at the first batter on the opposing team taking a few practice swings in a lightly delineated on-deck circle. Looking back and forth between teams, something caught her eye. "Grissom?"  
  
Her colleague was now copying names down in his notebook as the announcer excitedly read off the starting lineup for both teams. "These teams have the same uniform," she continued. "Well, one is white and one is blue, but they're both 15s. Is this some kind of scrimmage?"  
  
He smiled. "Every game is a scrimmage in this ballpark," he explained. "The Las Vegas 15s only play each other. Each team's composition is different every time, but they're still technically all on the same team." He turned to her. "A veritable celebration of individual achievement, wouldn't you say?"  
  
Sara shrugged, and was about to go back to watching the players warm up when Grissom asked her "Do you want to keep score?"  
  
She smiled self-consciously and glanced at the ground, which was cleaner than any sports stadium she'd ever visited. "I, uh, I don't really know how." Then she offered up a larger confession. "I haven't been to a ball game in more than 10 years."  
  
"Since college?" Grissom clarified, not sounding at all surprised.  
  
She smiled again. "High school," she admitted. "Dodger Game -- it was part of a school trip. I sat with the Physics Club and we took bets on where the ball would land based on the angle of the batter's swing. I cleaned up that day," she declared, sounding rather proud of herself.  
  
He watched the pitcher throw the ball across the plate, missing the ground by mere inches. Another pitch went by, this one just outside of the plate. She then realized he was not going to respond, and turned her attention back to the game unfolding before them.  
  
They sat in silence as the batter made contact with the ball, only to have it caught between center and right field.  
  
Sara tried not to be conspicuous as she watched him copy down the results in his notebook, but completely blew her cover by asking "What does 'FO' mean?"  
  
"Fly out," Grissom replied, without taking his eyes off the notebook. Then, he slid closer to her so she could get a better look at the page. "You also record where the ball was hit."  
  
She nodded, now noticing he was adjusting a number beside the player's name. "That's the average?" she asked.  
  
"A player's average is simply a percentage: it's the number of times on base divided by the number of times at bat. The change is minuscule this far into the season." He saw the interest evident in her eyes. "You want to try?"  
  
The second batter sent the ball rolling past the pitcher, where it was quickly cut off by the shortstop and tossed over to first for the out. "That's a grounder to the shortstop," she observed.  
  
"Ground out is GO," he added, handing her the notebook.  
  
Sara wrote down the play and updated the average in her head, putting the new figure beside the player's name.  
  
The third batter grounded to the pitcher to end their inning and the players began to switch positions.  
  
Turning the page of the notebook, Sara prepared to wait for the next round of batters, when Grissom informed her she had to do something first. "Adjust the pitcher's ERA," he told her.  
  
"But the other team didn't score any runs," she protested.  
  
He shrugged. "Doesn't matter. The pitcher went an inning without giving up any runs, so his earned run average must be adjusted accordingly. ERA is number of innings pitched divided by number of earned runs. His ERA went down."  
  
"By a fraction of a point!"  
  
He reached for the notebook. "It's OK if you can't come up with the answer right away." His eyes teased her knowingly, her eyes narrowing in response to the challenge.  
  
"I'll have the answer written down before you can compute it in your head" she informed him, proving her point by pausing briefly, then writing down a slightly smaller number beside the pitcher's name.  
  
During the top of the next inning, the first batter struck out (indicated by a K in the notebook) and the second batter drew a walk (BB for "base on balls.") The third player, however, produced the first hit of the game, which was illustrated by drawing part of the baseball diamond -- however many bases the player advanced -- plus a numeric expression of the hit (1B indicated a single, 2B a double, and so on).  
  
As the fourth batter was taking some practice swings, Sara felt Grissom's hand lightly on her back. "Look at the player on second base. He's stealing signs."  
  
She looked where he was indicating, but couldn't see anything out of the ordinary.  
  
Her confused look prompted him to explain further. "The catcher gives the pitcher hand signals about what kind of pitch he should throw. The runner on second can see those signals, and if he makes those same signals to the batter, the batter will know what kind of pitches to expect."  
  
"Is that illegal?" Sara seemed nonplused.  
  
Grissom shrugged. "By taking the element of surprise away from the pitcher, it gives the batter an unfair advantage."  
  
Sara kept her eyes on the runner, but still couldn't see what he was doing. "He's just using the information that's out there," she commented. "I don't see what's wrong with that." She had begun to relax more, having always found both sports and math extremely soothing.  
  
During the bottom of the third, a batter hit an easy ground ball to the third baseman, who in turn threw it over the first baseman's head.  
  
"Now you score that differently," Grissom explained, leaning over to elaborate. He slid even closer to her, his hand brushing her knee as he indicated the player's name in the book. "ROE. Reached on error."  
  
She nodded, marking the error down in the notebook, and meeting his eyes once more. "They don't give the batter credit for that?"  
  
He shrugged. "The batter didn't get on base of his own volition. Something else had to interfere."  
  
Sara did not push the issue further, and they went back to watching the game.  
  
When she had recorded the 21st out and it was the middle of the fifth inning, she once again turned to him. "Can you believe nobody's scored a run yet?" she asked.  
  
"It's called a pitcher's duel," he said. "Both pitchers are so good, none of the players can make a move. It's like a stalemate in chess." He paused before continuing. "It's very rare to see these types of games in the major leagues," he added. "The game has become all about great hitting. Most people watching a pitcher's duel would consider it boring because nothing ever happens. I tend to find pitcher's duels much more exciting than a homerun derby because the focus is on the fundamentals as opposed to the more flashy parts of the game."  
  
"What could possibly be exciting about a game where almost nothing happens?"  
  
"You tell me," he said, softly, meeting her eyes again.  
  
They held each other's gaze for a moment longer, then focused back on the action on the field.  
  
The second batter in the top of the sixth inning hit a bloop single in between the first baseman and shortstop.  
  
Sara recorded the hit in the notebook and computed the player's new average in her head.  
  
As the next batter took his first swing (and missed), the player with the lucky single figured he'd try to extend his luck even further and made a dash for second base.  
  
Grissom watched Sara watching the game, and she felt his eyes on her face.  
  
The catcher saw what the runner intended to do and quickly relayed the ball to the second baseman, who tagged the now unlucky runner out.  
  
"What do I call that?" Sara asked, turning to Grissom, who was now simply watching her, regarding her with the same intensity she'd only seen him reserve for the other game that was being played out in front of them. She looked at him, and basked in his gaze for the split second where he did not realize she was watching him back.  
  
The next moment, his attention had returned to the field. "Draw a line to second and write CS, and charge that player with an out."  
  
She did what she was told, then questioned "What does CS stand for?"  
  
"Caught stealing," he replied, without looking at her.  
  
The next two half-innings were uneventful, bringing them to the seventh inning stretch, where the jovial announcer enthusiastically encouraged everyone to join in a spirited round of "Take me out to the Ballgame."  
  
Grissom and Sara both got up, as was customary, but neither accepted the announcer's invitation to sing along.  
  
"So do you just not know the words, is that it?" she asked him, lightly.  
  
"What?"  
  
"The words to the song."  
  
He glanced out at the players tossing the ball back and forth in preparation for the next half-inning. Then, he turned back to her. "You want something to eat-- a ballpark hotdog maybe?" he asked her jokingly. He smiled as she rolled her eyes, a smile also appearing on her face before sitting back down and waiting for the game to begin. Grissom sat down much closer to her, so they were practically in the same loose definition of a bleacher "seat" and continued. "I take it you've never analyzed the content of a ballpark hotdog? There's practically nothing in them that can actually be called 'meat.'"  
  
Sara gave him the same quizzical look she was used to receiving from him, and then shook her head. "Call yourself a baseball fan and you don't even sing 'Take me out to the Ballgame,'" she remarked in mock disbelief.  
  
"I don't believe I heard you singing either," he replied, finally addressing the subject.  
  
"Ah, but I'm not the one who loves baseball. Now if this was a football game, I'd be belting out 'Who let the Dogs Out' with the best of them." She glanced at the ground, blushing as she realized she'd ventured into the territory of too much information.  
  
But Grissom did not take the bait for further humiliation that she'd unwittingly offered. "I have a fundamental problem with 'Take me out to the Ballgame,'" he admitted. "It espouses all of baseball's stereotypes. For example, it assumes a crowded stadium, junk food consumption and a home team victory are all essentials of baseball when none of them are. You could watch the visiting team win in an empty stadium while eating a salad. Doesn't change the essence of the game." His voice got softer, and the love he felt for the sport and his desire to share it with her shone in his eyes as he turned to look at her to further emphasize his point.  
  
She was silent for a moment before letting out a small tension- breaking laugh. "Nah, I bet you're just too embarrassed to sing it."  
  
"I'll sing 'Take me out to the Ballgame' after I hear your rousing rendition of 'Who let the Dogs Out.'" He returned her banter volley with one of his own.  
  
She leaned in closer. "You're changing the subject," she chided, lightly. "C'mon -- I won't tell anybody at work about it, I promise."  
  
Something in his eyes changed and all of a sudden, he was looking at her differently.  
  
She glanced back at the action on the field. "Hey, somebody got on base," she stated, attempting to break an entirely less pleasant form of tension than before.  
  
"Single to right field," he said, now physically turning his attention away from her and back to the game.  
  
She marked it in the notebook and calculated the player's new average. "What about the other two batters?" she asked, indicating the two "out" lights illuminated on the old-fashioned scoreboard.  
  
He glanced at the ground, murmuring "Didn't see them."  
  
The next batter grounded to the pitcher to end the inning.  
  
Sara recorded the updated ERA and then absently flipped through the notebook, scanning its pages quickly while Grissom was still watching the game.  
  
When he turned to look at her again, he was greeted with a warm gaze and an expression full of goofy admiration. His countenance sought the reason for her amazement and she obliged. "Uh, you've--you've never missed a batter. In this whole notebook -- you've seen every play." She looked down a moment when his expression told her she had given her emotions away. "How do you score those two batters, since neither of us knows what happened?"  
  
Her pen remained poised, the small notebook flat on her lap, her eyes full of genuine curiosity -- and interest. Grissom reached over and gently took the notebook and pen from her hands, brushing her fingers briefly with his own. He wrote something in the notebook, then handed it back to her along with the pen.  
  
She took the pen and notebook, not breaking eye contact, smiling as she read what he'd written:  
  
'OUT'  
  
In the bottom of the eighth, John D'Oughe, the Blue team catcher, scored on a lazy fly ball one of his teammates hit to center field.  
  
Sara was finally able to complete the four sides of the diamond, which signified a run.  
  
"Give that player a star by the fly out," Grissom instructed.  
  
"Why?"  
  
"He gets credit for the run batted in."  
  
Their eyes met and they exchanged smiles once again. "A veritable celebration of individual achievement," Sara echoed his praise of the game to herself as she drew the star. The expression of muted joy on his face, however, indicated he had heard her.  
  
And that was how the game ended. 1-0, Blue team, who coincidentally had been designated the "visiting team" that day.  
  
She recorded the final averages for the players and ERAs for the pitchers, and then closed the notebook, handing it back to Grissom. "All that time and the team that scored only one run ended up winning," she declared, shaking her head.  
  
"Sometimes that's all it takes," he answered, replacing the notebook.  
  
They walked out of the stadium, through the crowds into the makeshift parking lot where his car was located. Again they did not speak on the way back to the lab, but instead of gazing out the window, Sara found herself gazing at her companion in the driver's seat. She thought about the Blue team catcher, John D'Oughe, who scored the only run of the game. She pondered the moments of closeness she and Grissom had shared on those bleachers, remembering the looks, the smiles, the littlest touches. They all blended together into something resembling strong affection, though she found that remembering the context of each moment was just as impossible as coming up with the name of the player who had hit the fly ball to drive in the game's sole -- and winning -- run.  
  
Only when the car had been parked at the lab did he turn to her and speak. "So, is baseball still not your game?"  
  
"It has...potential," she assented, as they both got out of the car.  
  
He gently took her arm as they walked back toward the lab. "You realize I'm going to hold you to your word." Her brows furrowed, unsure of what he meant. "To sing 'Who let the Dogs Out,'" he clarified.  
  
She shook her head and grinned. "Only if I get to hear that tune you made up about eating a salad while the visiting team wins a ball game in an empty stadium."  
  
He looked over at Sara and her smile one more time, and they continued their walk in silence.  
  
The heat had become oppressive, and when Sara reached up to tighten her ponytail, she found she only had one hand free. Somewhere in between the car and the lab, he'd gone from holding her arm to holding her hand. When Grissom saw her looking at their hands clasped together, he dropped her hand and dropped back, as if he'd just been tagged out at the plate. She adjusted her ponytail and then the two of them just stood there at the lab doors, neither one making a move to go back to work. The department's most avid workaholics doing absolutely nothing.  
  
"Thanks," she said, once again stepping into her role as tension-breaker for the two of them. "That was a great break."  
  
"Well it was a great game," he responded, taking a small step towards her.  
  
Again, she felt that smile appearing on her face. "Yeah, it was" she practically whispered.  
  
Another moment passed and as numerous candidates for different things to say flew through Sara's mind, Grissom opened the door to the lab and went inside. The door closed behind him and she stared at it.  
  
"You got on base, Gris," she murmured. "And it only takes one run to win the game." Then she turned and walked to her car, humming a catchy little song about an empty stadium and a salad.  
  
The End. 


End file.
